The Saints put up 10 points at home against the 30th defense in the NFL. Granted the defense allowed such long clock draining drives, that didn’t help, but the bottom line is the production wasn’t good enough. The Saints put up 75 yards on the ground and 2.9 per carry against a defense that was giving up over 140 yards per game rushing and 4.5 per carry going in. The offensive line just didn’t show up and they were dominated in the trenches. So don’t expect good grades. Enough said.
Drew Brees: B- (2.63) He missed a couple of throws downfield he normally makes but otherwise he played a clean game. Most notable is that he had no turnovers, something that desperately needed to happen. Unfortunately that came at the expense of him taking any real risks or shots downfield. Too often he settled for the secure throw underneath and generally played a very safe game. Clearly the number of turnovers lately had their impact on his willingness to be aggressive. He finished 33 of 41 for 255 yards and 1 touchdown. He also scrambled for a run that went for what would have been a career long 36 yards, too bad it was called back for a hold.
Mark Ingram: C (3.24) He finished with 23 carries for 67 yards and 7 catches for 30 yards. He did a great job catching the football but that’s about it. This wasn’t the Ingram we’ve seen the last few weeks. He looked a little slower and unable to break tackles. He was also much less decisive with his cuts. Much of that is on the O-line, but you have to wonder if the sore shoulder combined with the heavy workload has impacted his physicality.
Travaris Cadet: C- (2.30) He’s the number two back with PT and Khiry both out, but his contribution remains insignificant. With what he’s made of these opportunities I have to question the worth in keeping him around on the roster next season. He had 4 catches for 31 yards and lost a fumble on his lone carry. That fumble came on the Saints’ final possession because he just couldn’t stand having the unit go an entire game without a turnover, apparently.
Brian Leonard: C+ (2.33) He didn’t play much but give him credit for securing one nice catch and getting a little yardage after it for a gain of 15.
Erik Lorig: D+ (2.17) He has decent hands, I’ll give him that. He was targeted 4 times and caught all four for a whooping 5 yards. One was a 4th down goal line catch where he was crushed at the 2 forcing a turnover on downs. His blocking on running plays made no impact. I miss Austin Johnson.
Jimmy Graham: C (2.87) He got rocked early in this game and seemed to injure his shoulder again. He came right back though. He finished with just 3 catches for 29 yards and ended up on the ground a lot of the times he was blocking. Very disappointing to not see him do more in this one.
Josh Hill: C- (2.67) His one target was a deep ball down the seam that went just off his fingertips. It wasn’t a well located ball by Brees, but it was catchable, unfortunately Hill came up just a bit short. His blocking was nothing to write home about, like everyone else on the team.
Ben Watson: C- (2.20) A non factor contribution. No major mistakes, no targets, but generally made no impact.
Marques Colston: C (2.17) He finished with 4 catches for 56 yards including an incredible vintage Colston grab on the sideline keeping both feet in bounds. He had an end zone target where he almost brought in the ball with one game. That was a tough catch to make, but it could have made a big difference in the game because the Saints would later turn the ball over on downs there. He also had another bad drop on a 3rd down target close to the marker. He just can’t seem to put four quarters of good football together this year.
Kenny Stills: B- (2.37) He finished with 4 catches for 32 yards and a touchdown. He didn’t get open much but made some secure catches underneath. On his touchdown grab he did a terrific job of turning his body upfield and finding the pylon as he dove.
Brandin Cooks: C+ (2.70) He finished with 5 catches for 50 yards and had a jet sweep for 5 yards. Too bad on the run, he had a shot at scoring and that was the same drive that finished in no points. A couple of those catches were in garbage time giving the Saints no real benefit. He goes for long stretches at times not giving any real contribution and I wonder if that’s Brees not fully trusting him yet or defenses doing a good job of bottling up his routes. He had one punt return for 4 yards after the Saints apparently spent all this time putting emphasis on blocking this week in practice. Didn’t yield much, of course the Bengals were rarely punting.
Joe Morgan: C+ (1.67) Welcome back Joe! He had one target and it resulted in a 7 yard reception for a first down. This grade is probably a little generous, but it was good to see him on the field doing something positive. I noticed he also replaced Cadet on a kickoff return late but the kicks were too deep to have a shot at bringing one out in this game. I’m still hoping he has a role in the return game before season’s end.
Terron Armstead: C+ (2.74) Probably the better o-lineman on the day but he still didn’t get much push in the run game. Held up well in pass protection.
Ben Grubbs: D+ (2.67) Besides a holding penalty that would kill a drive and force the Saints to punt, the Saints clearly saw a mismatch on tape running behind Grubbs because they went back to that well as often as they could. Grubbs was a major disappointment in this one not getting the push or physicality in the trenches we expected. The Saints counted on going behind Grubbs to expose this 30th ranked run defense and it just didn’t happen.
Jonathan Goodwin: C- (2.46) He had another poor snap on a shotgun play and he had trouble at times against Domata Peko, who was all over the field. Most notable was a goal line carry by Ingram where Peko easily got into the backfield and blew up the play (before getting an unnecessary roughness penalty). The Saints had trouble containing Peko. Hopefully Goody can get back to being fully healthy real soon.
Jahri Evans: C (2.77) Had his fair share of struggles against Geno Atkins. Didn’t have the push we normally see in the running game and the pocket wasn’t as clean as usual.
Zach Strief: C- (2.60) He left the game with a concussion and would not return. Before leaving he quietly had a pretty mediocre performance. Carlos Dunlap caused him problems.
Bryce Harris: C (1.75) He came in for Strief and on the whole he actually held up ok. He definitely gave up a decent amount of pressure, but Brees’ release was quick, and Harris held up better than I expected. His one bad moment was a holding penalty that negated a 36 yard run by Brees.
My Offensive Player of the Game: Drew Brees
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
